A biopic of Afeni Shakur — the late mother of rapper Tupac — is in the works.
“Peace, Love & Respect; the Afeni Shakur/Panther 21 story,” is being developed by Amaru Entertainment and the Shakur Estate.
According to Variety, multi-talented director Jasmine Guy and writer Jamal Joseph will serve as executive producers, while Dina LaPolt is a producer. The upcoming biopic is the first to have the full backing and approval of the Shakur estate.
The film will focus on Shakur’s arrest on April 2, 1969 (along with 20 other Black Panthers) on June 16, 1971 (the day of Tupac Shakur’s birth.). They were arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb police stations in New York. The charges were later dismissed.
Afeni Shakur was born in North Carolina as Alice Faye Williams in 1947 before moving to the Bronx with her mother. In 1968, she joined the Panthers after hearing Bobby Seale speak. She went on to marry her first husband, fellow Black Panther member Lumumba Shakur soon after.
Lumumba was the leader of the Black Panthers in Harlem. The marriage dissolved when Lumumba discovered he was not Pac’s biological father. Lumumba was found dead in Louisiana in 1971.
“My mother was very much a part of the civil rights movement — she taught me about Afeni and how she was arrested as a member of the ‘Panther 21,'” said LaPolt.
“When the trial started, Afeni had gotten pregnant when she was out on bail,” LaPolt continued. “Two of the Panthers absconded, the judge freaked out and Afeni got put back in jail. She was five months pregnant [with Tupac] and made a motion to get a glass of milk for her unborn child! She had a lot of self-confidence, and that’s our movie — it begins with the day she was arrested.”
Shakur died May 2, 2016, at a hospital near her home in Sausalito, Calif. She was 69.
